GENEVA – UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria today signed an agreement intended to improve health services for refugees and other displaced communities. This new agreement will strengthen UNHCR’s humanitarian response - focusing on public health and education as well as emergency care.

“Our focus remains on working together to provide specialized health care for refugees and the communities hosting them,” said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi. “This partnership ensures refugees have access to treatments for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.”

The agencies are already working together in Rwanda, where UNHCR is implementing a grant of US$2.09 million from the Global Fund to address health needs for Burundian refugees. Further discussions are also underway to expand joint activities in the Middle East and East Africa.

“We need to better connect pieces of the humanitarian response within the larger development continuum,” said Mark Dybul, Executive Director of the Global Fund. “This framework promotes innovation and advancing efforts that make sense and that work.”